Firefly-mimicking intensive and long-lasting chemiluminescence hydrogels

Yating Liu,Wei Wang,Mingming Ma,Hua Cui,Jiangnan Shu,Wen Shen,Qi Li,Lingfeng Gao

doi:10.1038/s41467-017-01101-6

Abstract

Most known chemiluminescence (CL) reactions exhibit flash-type light emission. Great efforts have been devoted to the development of CL systems that emit light with high intensity and long-lasting time. However, a long-lasting CL system that can last for hundreds of hours is yet-to-be-demonstrated. Here we show firefly-mimicking intensive and long-lasting CL hydrogels consisting of chitosan, CL reagent N-(4-aminobutyl)-N-ethylisoluminol (ABEI) and catalyst Co2+. The light emission is even visible to naked eyes and lasts for over 150 h when the hydrogels are mixed with H2O2. This is attributed to slow-diffusion-controlled heterogeneous catalysis. Co2+ located at the skeleton of the hydrogels as an active site catalyzes the decomposition of slowly diffusing H2O2, followed by the reaction with ABEI to generate intensive and long-lasting CL. This mimics firefly bioluminescence system in terms of intensity, duration time and catalytic characteristic, which is of potential applications in cold light sources, bioassays, biosensors and biological imaging.

Highlights

Most known chemiluminescence (CL) reactions exhibit flash-type light emission
The CL spectrum of ABEI/Co2+/CS hydrogels with H2O2 exhibited a peak centered at ~ 440 nm, as shown in Supplementary Fig. 3, which was consistent with that of the CL reaction of ABEI with H2O215. These results demonstrated that the CL reaction of ABEI with H2O2 was responsible for the light emission
The results demonstrated that 0.18 % Co2+ and 89.48% ABEI existed in aqueous phase

Summary

Introduction

Most known chemiluminescence (CL) reactions exhibit flash-type light emission. Great efforts have been devoted to the development of CL systems that emit light with high intensity and long-lasting time. Co2+ located at the skeleton of the hydrogels as an active site catalyzes the decomposition of slowly diffusing H2O2, followed by the reaction with ABEI to generate intensive and long-lasting CL. This mimics firefly bioluminescence system in terms of intensity, duration time and catalytic characteristic, which is of potential applications in cold light sources, bioassays, biosensors and biological imaging. We report an intensive and long-lasting CL chitosan (CS) hydrogel with CL reagent N-(4-aminobutyl)-N-ethylisoluminol (ABEI) and catalyst Co2+ (ABEI/Co2+/CS hydrogels) by virtue of a slow-diffusion-controlled heterogeneous catalytic mechanism, which mimics the firefly BL system in terms of both catalytic and kinetic characteristics. The light emission is even visible to naked eyes and lasts for over 150 h

Methods

Results

Conclusion